The Many Deaths of Gaius Baltar
by LisaT
Summary: Baltar dodges death, again and again. Then he chooses to face it. Spoilers for all seasons, but especially 4.5.


**I don't like Baltar. I really don't. But this short fic popped into my head weeks ago, and demanded to be written. It was posted on lj, but I've gone over again and polished it a little before posting here. Feedback would wonderful, and make my day..**

_**The Many Deaths of Gaius Baltar**_

**1. Caprica, before the Fall.**

The only thing Gaius Baltar believed in was himself, but his self-belief was bottomless. He was suffused with a sense of his own awesomeness.

Clever, _check_.

Wealthy, _check_.

Famous, _check_.

Good-looking in a suave kind of way, _check_, even if he was rather short.

Not that it mattered. Being relatively diminutive in stature was compensated in ... other ways. Anyone who doubted that had only to look at his girlfriend for confirmation. A woman who combined beauty, brains and blondeness with a sensuality so potent that male (and female) heads turned on sight of her. If Gaius were any other man, he would question his good fortune, but he was Gaius Baltar and he took it for granted. The gods loved him and fate shone on him.

It was, therefore, all the more shocking when his beautiful girlfriend turned to him and told him - in exactly the same sultry voice that she used to entice him to bed - that she was a Cylon.

At first, Gaius refused to believe it. Everyone knew that Cylons were … well, toasters. Shiny steel things.

His girlfriend simply smiled at him and for the first time, he noticed a curious stillness. Then he turned cold with horror as he realised how she'd used him to get into the defence mainframe.

Yet when the worlds ended she saved his life. When consciousness returned, he dragged himself out from under her body (that beautiful, honey-toned lithe fake body). He left the remains of his apartment and his lover without a second glance and he did not stop to question why he had survived, for he simply accepted it as his due.

**2. New Caprica, **_**Colonial One**_**.**

"Sign it!" Doral hissed, forcing Baltar's head onto the presidential desk and holding a black muzzle to his temple.

Baltar groaned and tried to move away from the gun. Doral simply moved with him, and Gaius whimpered. This could not be happening, not to him. What had he done to deserve this? He'd co-operated, hadn't he? He'd surrendered. The Cylons held New Caprica as surely as they held the ruins of the devastated Twelve Colonies.

And now they wanted him to sign death lists.

Felix had come to him with them, shook them under his nose (he'd nearly ended up with a lovely paper cut, too) and demanded to know what he intended to do with them. Too many of the names were familiar. Cally Tyrol. Tom Zarek, his former vice-president. Laura Roslin…

Gaius whimpered again. It was time to take a stand. "No," he said. _There_.

A very unpleasant smile crossed Doral's features. "Are you sure? Once I discharge the gun… there's no second chances for _you_."

"There comes a time in a man's life when he must hold the line," Gaius told him grandly, although as Doral still his head to the desk, his tones were somewhat muffled.

Doral snorted and pulled his head up by his hair. "Pull the other one. You're not that noble. Roslin could use that line and get away with it, even Zarek, but you… _pffft_."

What a vulgar little man, Gaius thought indignantly. The gun was back at his temple. He had to make the decision.

It was all about choices and the fate of the human race, wasn't it? And who was more important to the survival of humanity – Gaius Baltar, genius, scientist, and politician, or Laura Roslin, schoolteacher?

He signed.

At gunpoint.

He could have _died_.

**3. **_**Galactica**_**'s Brig**

_A Cylon, or not a Cylon? That is the question. _

_Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…_

Six stood beside him, switching between guardian angel and devil on his shoulder with such speed that he could not keep up.

"It's the only way," she told him as her strong hands placed the improvised noose around his neck and fastened it on a pipe above their heads.

"Wait," Gaius called. "I'm not ready." If he was a Cylon, this was simply part of his path, but if he wasn't, he would visit the undiscovered country from which no traveller returns, and he wasn't too keen on making _that_ particular one-way trip just yet.

"Too late," Six whispered, and kicked the bed on which he stood away.

Through the haze of suffocating pain all Gaius could think was that _he wasn't ready, he didn't want to die, he was too _important_ to die, for gods' sake…_ and then he was waking up in bath of goo.

He was momentarily pleased, but then it all went wrong.

And he woke up, again. In Cottle's sickbay, which was even more wrong. Roslin and Adama stood at the bottom of his bed and looked at him with faux concern and compassion (hah! He knew Roslin was secretly sorry his hanging had failed. Save her from throwing him out an airlock…).

Gaius studied his once-perfect fingernails as the two of them verbally haemorrhaged, as they always did. How many times could one man die, and not?

**4. The Basestar**

_Drip_

_Thrum_

_Drip-drip_

_Thrum_

_Drip-drip-drip_

"Please," Gaius whispered. It was dark inside the basestar, but he knew that the darkness currently crowding his mind was something more. His life was draining slowly and inexorably from the hole in his hide and his saviour was sitting there, doing _nothing_.

His last coherent thought was that he'd always known Laura Roslin was short sighted when it really mattered.

He was, therefore, rather surprised when the blackness receded and he became aware of three things: agonising pain, firm pressure on his side, and a trembling voice that pleaded, "No. Don't go. Please don't go."

He groaned and opened his eyes. Everything was hazy, but Roslin's face was close to his – so close that he could see lines drawn by time and the cancer-stretched transparency of her skin.

"I'm dying," she'd told him that day in one of _Galactica_'s cells. She'd gestured to her long dark hair and told him it was a wig. Then, in the soft tones that always made him shiver, she'd reminded him that she had nothing to lose and that he _really_ didn't want to push her.

He hadn't believed her, and he'd pushed. Pushed her right over the edge by confessing his part in the destruction of the Colonies. Perhaps he'd even done it deliberately. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul, after all.

"Good. Stay here," she whispered as he groaned again, her hands pressing against his side once more. "Don't go."

He met her eyes behind her glasses – still so deep and clear, after everything – and realised that there was something there that he hadn't seen in Laura Roslin's gaze for a very long time.

_Peace_.

As he slipped into sleep he found time to be envious.

5. Hangar deck, Galactica

"This… is likely to be…a one-way trip!" Admiral Adama said, his voice rolling throughout the huge space, echoing and bouncing off the bulkheads.

His audience shuffled awkwardly as the admiral explained the purpose of the red line that divided the hangar deck. Then he threw down his gauntlet. Beyond all reason, beyond all sense, he had committed himself to retrieving Hera Agathon, and now he waited to see who would commit themselves with him.

The audience went still.

Gaius Baltar watched as the pause lengthened and people began to move. Some, like Cottle, were sent back. He took a step towards the red line, and found that Paulla was restraining him.

"No, Gaius," she said, desperation and surprise mingling in her tone as he resisted. "You can't do this."

He stopped trying to pull away from her as the crowd near him began to part, to separate like some mythical sea.

And watched as Laura Roslin, terrifyingly frail and hardly able to stand, let alone walk, lurched down the red line, down the path her people had made, towards the admiral. Adama went to her at once, lending her his arm, and Baltar overheard their murmured exchange as they walked past.

"You didn't think you were gonna take off without me, Admiral, did you?"

"Never crossed my mind, Madam President."

He continued to watch as Adama steadied Roslin next to Starbuck, and the pilot wrapped her strong young arm around the older woman and held her upright.

Gaius swallowed. Emotions too complex to name swirled within him.

"No," Paulla said again, and he looked at her and found only a stranger with a familiar face.

The people on the other side of the line were his family. He had hated them, loved them, worked with them, worked against them, saved them and almost killed them. But, despite everything, he _belonged_ with them.

And Six had always said that his fate was linked with Hera's.

He crossed the line.

This time, if death came, it would be because he chose it.

-End.


End file.
